The author of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood has shared a powerful and cryptic cartoon, urging women to vote in the upcoming US election.
Voting will close on 5 November in the US presidential election and candidates Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are reportedly neck and neck in the polling.
Abortion rights have been a prominent debate in this election cycle after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, something which Trump celebrated.
For months, Harris has warned Americans that Trump will go to greater lengths to restrict reproductive freedoms than he already has, pointing to plans laid out in Project 2025 – a document created by The Heritage Foundation to which Trump has multiple ties.
The former president has promised he wouldn’t do so while distancing himself from Project 2025.
Atwood has now shared an impactful cartoon by Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Mike Luckovich at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution hinting just how important women’s rights will be in the outcome of the vote.
The image shows a line of Handmaids, complete with their red cloaks and white bonnets, lining up at a voting booth. After each of the women cast their vote, they toss aside their Handmaid outfits and walk away wearing modern clothes.
Atwood posted the cartoon without a message but it has since received a flurry of replies in support. One person wrote: “Let’s leave Gilead to fiction. Everyone vote!”
Another person said: “Women will vote for their freedom.”
Current UK Labour MP Stella Creasy also shared the image adding: “If you think this is just a concern for American politics, you don’t understand that even in 2024 around the world women are just at different points in this queue…”
Atwood’s 1985 novel is set in a dystopian version of the United States which has been overtaken by a radical religious cult, who have renamed the country Gilead. Under the new government, many women are enslaved and called “Handmaids” whose sole purpose is to bear children for rich families.
The novel has since been turned into an award-winning television show starring Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Ann Dowd, Bradley Whitford and Joseph Fiennes.
Women dressed as Handmaids have appeared at protests in the United States throughout Trump’s ascension as a political force, with many comparing the overturning of Roe v Wade to the events of the book.
